Review: The Eternal Wonder

I’ve only read one other book by Pearl S. Buck and the difference in quality between The Good Earth and The Eternal Wonder is striking. When poking around the Internet, I learned this book was published posthumously under strange circumstances. Knowing this alleviates the guilt of not finishing it (I skimmed the second half) because I’d never have picked it up if I’d known. I don’t want anyone to publish my drafts when I’m dead, so I’d rather not read the unfinished works of others.

Beyond the questionable publishing issues, The Eternal Wonder is astonishingly bad. It follows Rann’s development from the Smartest Kid Ever into the Smartest Adult Ever. (There’s also a weird bit when he’s still in utero, but still special.) The plot points are a series of social interactions in which Regular People fawn over him and how super-exta-ultra-omg-brilliant he is. This scene with him at age four sets the tone. He has just asked his mother for the definition of the word “intellectual” and she’s said that his brain frightens her:

“What does my brain look like, Mama?”
“Like everyone’s, I guess—a wrinkly gray something.”
“Then why does it scare you?”
“You do ask such questions—” She broke off.
“But I have to ask you, Mama. If I don’t ask, I won’t know.”
“You could look in the dictionary.”
“Where is it, Mama?”
She put down her sewing then and led him to the library and to a big book open on a small table and showed him how to find words.
[…]
He listened and looked, absorbed and fascinated. This big book, then, was the source of all words! He had the key, he knew the principle!
“I won’t ever need to ask you again, Mama. I know now, all by myself.” (25-26)

The best part of Rann’s new friendship with the dictionary means the reader doesn’t have to weed through any more “what does this mean” moments. And he’s four! (Please don’t leave comments telling me that your extra-gifted kid said all this at age two while simultaneously rollerblading backwards and writing an opera.)

Much is made of Rann’s superior intelligence and how it naturally follows that he is alone, but this premise grates on me. Rann isn’t alone because he’s smart—he’s alone because he appears incapable of empathy or of feigning interest in other people. He buys into a false dichotomy that all interactions are either the height of intellectualism or meaningless. It would be one thing if Rann learned otherwise over the course of the novel, but the narration falls prey to the same obsequious Rann-worship that makes him and the supporting cast insufferable. Rann’s passive cruelty toward everyone that can’t keep up with him intellectually makes him a creature to be pitied. I don’t know why everyone falls over themselves to praise him.

How do the people in Rann’s life put up with him? I couldn’t manage all 288 pages of this book! He takes his college entrance examinations at 12 and soon after he’s miserable at school:

So far as he could discover, none of his classmates suffered as he did. He had no friends, for mere friendliness, and he was by instinct eagerly friendly, did not mean friendship. He felt, at times, that he was in a desert alone, a desert of his own making merely because he was as he was. He had long ago outgrown his mother and he had almost ceased to think of his father. He was totally absorbed in the problem of himself and what direction he should give himself. He lived in absolute loneliness for most of his time at college. (65)

Self-absorption isn’t an endearing quality even if Rann’s “self” is better than everyone else’s.

This book isn’t as well-written as The Good Earth, but Buck gets points for saying “[Rann] was totally absorbed in the problem of himself” instead of “in a great puff of pomposity, he vanished entirely up his own ass.” But that’s why she won the Nobel Prize for Fiction and I am a blogger.

Overall: No rating. I’m not convinced this book was “finished,” so how can I rate it? After The Good Earth, and given Buck’s status as a Nobel Prize winner, I’d still like to read more of her work.

Thank you! I was hesitant to be so critical since it’s unfinished, but there are places where it crosses the line from just being a bad book to offering a twisted message. The end was warped. I was going to mention it more in my review, but since I was skimming by that point there’s a chance I missed something that would have cushioned it. (Not sure what that something would be, but I’m not about to reread the book to find out!)